him was slender and quite tall. His sun-weathered face was covered in wrinkles, and the hair on his head was quite faded. It was clear that he must have spent a great deal of his life outdoors, and this hadn’t done him any favours, as his posture and other features clearly indicated that he was thirty at most. In addition, on the right-hand side of his face, he had an interesting tattoo done in navy blue ink. Just below his eye ran a pattern resembling waves, and beneath that, two intersecting straight lines. Slightly lower down, closer to his cheek, he had some sort of constellation tattooed, but Draco didn’t recognise it.
‘I see you’ve already had a chance to meet Instructor Hartmann. Perhaps that’s for the best,’ the man remarked, though it was hard to tell exactly what he meant. ‘My name is Luke Carter and I’m the supervisor of the second group, as well as a combat magic instructor. We’ll be stuck with each other for the next few years,’ he concluded with a fleeting smile.
‘I’m glad to meet you, Instructor.’ The boy had nothing else to say. He’d learnt long ago that you don’t argue with teachers. And it wasn’t just about the attitude of those working at Dagos.
‘I think you know everything you need to, and you’ll find out the rest from your new classmates anyway.’ The instructor looked out of the window behind the dragon. ‘There's still a bit of time before the official start, but I think everyone else will already be in the classroom. So there’s no point in delaying.’ The instructor nodded to the dragon and, without a word, headed towards the stairs.
Walking through the corridors of the Tower of Fire felt different this time. There was a fair amount of traffic everywhere, not to say a crowd. It seemed that hardly anyone had left it to the last minute to find their classroom, and everyone wanted to be on time on the first day of the term. It was understandable.
Instructor Carter led the dragon to the last
